Reptiles in the Soil

Occasionally whilst digging in our garden I unearth a dark worm-like animal, a bit thicker than a strand of cooked spaghetti and 4 to 5 inches long. On being exposed they wriggle around vigorously and quickly disappear back into the soil. But if I'm fast enough I can catch it on my spade or in my hand for a better look. I don't usually catch our wildlife, preferring to just let it go on its way, but these guys are so fascinating that sometimes I can't resist.

They may look and behave like dark worms but these are Blind Snakes, probably the Brahminy Blind Snake (Indotyphlops braminus). The head end is bluntly rounded and the body only tapers to a short point right at the end. Absolutely harmless to people their mouths are not even big enough to bite human skin. They live on the eggs and larvae of termites and ants, both of which are plentiful in our garden.

Close-up the tiny scales, tiny flickering tongue and tiny eye-spots that give them away as a snake can be seen if your eyesight is good enough, but their movement is also more serpentine than wormy. They seem quite fragile and I always handle them with care and never for very long. Watching them dive back underground when I release them is always a pleasure.

If their physical nature and subterranean lifestyle isn't fascinating enough, how about the fact that nobody has ever found a male one! They are all female and are the only snake in the world that produces young through parthenogenesis where she produces eggs with no need of a male.

Working around our compost heap one day I spotted a very light-coloured one wriggling out of sight and was just quick enough to catch it. As soon as I transferred it to a tupperware box I realised that I had something different. Apart from the colour it also had a pointed snout and a slightly thicker but more tapering body. However, the most striking feature about it was that it had legs! They were tiny but definitely there and they worked hard to gain some traction on the smooth surface of the plastic box.

This was my first view of a Siamese Supple Skink (Lygosoma siamensis). A lizard with a remarkably similar shape, size and lifestyle to the Blind Snakes, even down to their diet of ants and termites. Here I had a great example of convergent evolution in my own compost heap - where two quite different animals have gradually evolved into something so similar. Perhaps those legs will actually disappear one day, although we will all be long-gone by then.

I felt quite sorry for it struggling around the box so took a quick photo and let it go. Again, it was a real pleasure to watch it fold it legs to the sides of its body and flow with snake-like grace back into the depths.

It always feels like a privelege to find animals like these and the only shame is that I have little chance of ever getting to know either of these beasts any better than these brief encounters. We share the garden and yet they live in a completely different world.